Review of "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" (2002)

Review by Staci Layne Wilson for Horror.com

Satirizing the worst of the fifties B-Movies, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra comes off like a self-aware Edward D. Wood Jr. film. Or at least, it tries to. It's hard to get past all the things that don't quite work - such as the glaring use of video instead of film, completely off-kilter camera angles, and hair and makeup that looked too modern (what? Nothing in the budget for hairspray and heavy eyeliner?). 

The intentionally absurd plot features a bespectacled dim-witted scientist (writer/director/star, Larry Blamire), his darling and ditzy wife (Fay Masterson from Drive, She Said), a nefarious rival scientist (Brian Howe from The Majestic) who's made himself a cat-woman girlfriend (Jennifer Blaire, Blamire's real-life wife) out of forest animals, a pair of clueless space aliens (Susan McConnell, Andrew Parks) and their a three-eyed pet mutant who has a penchant for mutilation, and of course the Lost Skeleton himself (who doesn't stay lost for long). The cranky skeleton is mildly amusing, but again there is a problem with the film being too modern (in the bag of bones' dialogue).

I admire what Blamire was trying to accomplish, and the actors certainly have their camp chomps (especially the beautiful Blaire, who was the only one who looked 50s-ready) but overall the movie, at a scant 89 minutes, is too short on substance and too long on tedium. I got the joke two minutes into the movie, and it never went anywhere from there. It reminded me of a cross between Swamp Thing, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and a Saturday Night Live "Cone Heads" sketch -- and not in a good way.

As far as I'm concerned, the "oldies but baddies" are entertaining because they are the real deal. The exposition-heavy dialogue, bad jokes and terrible FX are funny because they weren't supposed to be. My bone of contention with The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is that it can't quite straddle the fine line between tongue-in-cheek parody and serious homage. Still, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra may well have an audience in big time B-movie fans.

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra will be released by Sony Pictures Repertory in Los Angeles and New York on February 6th, 2004; Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Berkeley and San Jose on February 13th; Seattle and Austin on February 20th, Atlanta on March 5th, and then expands nationwide on March 12th. Preceding the feature will be SKELETON FROLIC, a mildly amusing 1937 short cartoon featuring a skeletal, bird-flipping boneyard band, directed by Ub Iwerks.